States don’t have rights - they have powers.
I’ve always been ambivalent about initiatives. They tend to veer uncomfortably close to pure the democracy favored by the left than to representative republicanism. That said I fell on the side of the proponents of Prop 8 and was sorry to see it gutted by the 9th circus court.
But remember, all SCOTUS said was that the plaintiffs did not have standing to argue the case before the bench - they did not rule on the merits of Prop 8 or homo marriage itself. The only ones who had standing to pursue the case was governor moonbeam or the state AG.
Would you have preferred that they came to the “right” result but at the expense of the rule of law?
I agree with you about Proposition 8 and I also respect the right for California to have these initiatives coded into their Constitution. The SCOTUS was wrong... but these days they usually are... either by being politically active legislators from the bench or via cowardly evasiveness.
The SCOTUS nullified the will of the people of California through their cowardice. I would have preferred that they had stated that the Constitution of California contains the right of the people to modify it via the ballot initiative process and that it was a State matter and not within the power of the Federal Judiciary to legislate it otherwise. I also wish that roberts had not used "legislating from the bench" to declare obamacare a tax when the Federal government itself was arguing that it was not a tax... but we all suspect why roberts ruled the way that he did... and it was not a morally nor Constitutionally correct decision.